by Ben Karlin
Dan Vebber
Milwaukee native Dan Vebber served His Country as one of the first editors of The Onion before writing for Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Daria, Futurama, American Dad, and other such programs catering to the valuable stoned-kids-who-light-their-farts demographic. He currently resides in Development Hell, where his projects include a stapled, Xeroxed packet of his cartoons rejected by The New Yorker, due to be sent to his mother sometime in ’08.
David Wain
David Wain is a director, writer, comedian, and actor. He co-wrote and directed the movies Wet Hot American Summer and The Ten. On television he co-created and starred in two series: The State for MTV and Stella for Comedy Central. He lives and works in New York and on www.davidwain.com.
Larry Wilmore
Emmy Award winner Larry Wilmore has been working in television for nearly twenty-five years as a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He is currently the “Senior Black Correspondent” (after a brief stint as “Black Correspondent”) on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. He has also most recently been a consulting producer on The Office on NBC, where he has also appeared as a performer. Wilmore was also creator and executive producer of The Bernie Mac Show for Fox, for which he won an Emmy, an NAACP Image Award, and a Peabody; as well as executive producer and co-creator of The PJs starring Eddie Murphy. He is currently writing his first book.
Acknowledgments
Honestly, I decided to do an anthology because I thought it would be easier than writing a whole book by myself. I was wrong. Compiling this was never easy and I was an idiot for thinking it would be otherwise. That is my first and foremost acknowledgment. I am dumb.
That being said, many people contributed in ways great and small to make this book happen. Comparatively, a relative few made it much, much harder. They will be getting their own acknowledgment in my follow-up project, You’re Dead to Me. It will not be funny at all.
First and foremost, I would like to thank each contributor for their time, good will, and most of all for lending their prodigious talents to this project. The best people are usually the busiest, yet the collective you made time for this. And not half-assed time. Real time. I sincerely thank you.
By far the person I would like to thank the most is Lauren Sarver. She has been dedicated, professional, diligent, good-humored, and 100 percent reliable. I hope they clone her, ethics be damned. Andy Selsberg is a gifted editor, a talented humorist, a great friend, and oddly, a skilled draftsman. All but one of those came into play during our time working together on this.
Jenn Joel provided many hours of support, counsel, and feedback—all of them useful. Same for Wendy Kirk, who is a spectacularly kind and patient human being. Also, she’s great at her job. Lisa Leingang is awesome and helped far more than she thinks she did. I would like to also thank Paul Sahre for his eleventh-hour design wizardry. I almost ruined his trip to France and he was still very nice to me.
David Miner, Cliff Gilbert-Lurie, and Jennifer Fiore brought insight and expertise and the ability to explain what the hell things mean to me. Thank you for that. Also thanks to Leslie Maskin and Sue Naegle for their perpetual support. Mandy Beckner and Will Reiser at Superego came in toward the end, yet still helped me improve this book tremendously.
At The Daily Show, giant kudos to Hillary Kun, who is the best at an impossible, often thankless job. Thank you. Also thanks to Kahane Corn, Jen Flanz, David Javerbaum, Rich Korson, Beth Shorr, and Jon Stewart. At The Colbert Report, thank you to the unmatchable Meredith Bennett, Rich Dahm, Hilary Siegel, and Allison Silverman.
To Bob Castillo, Jimmy Franco, Ben Greenberg, Sharon Krassney, Anne Twomey, Sara Weiss, and most of all Jamie Raab at Grand Central Publishing: I could not ask for a better environment in which to work. Seriously, I am contractually prohibited from asking for a better environment. I should probably not agree to that next time around. Doesn’t matter, there isn’t one anyway. Thank you.
For their friendship and guidance thanks to Josh Bycel, Izzy Grinspan, Julia Hoffmann, Aaron Lubarsky, Sarah Vowell, Paula Scher, and Stuart Zicherman. Stu’s patience is a wonder of the world, like, right next to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
To my mom, my dad, Nanci, Lin, Julie, and David, if I’ve never said thank you for all your love and support over the years, then this is a pretty lame place to first do so. Hopefully, I have and this is just more like a public proclamation of something you all already know . . . right?
And finally, to Paola Guastini, te amo.
Table of Contents
Foreword: I Think My Son Is a Catch by Barbara Karlin
Introduction by Nick Hornby
Sex Is the Most Stressful Thing in the History of the Universe by Dan Vebber
Girls Don’t Make Passes at Boys with Fat Asses by Andy Richter
Beware of Math Tutors Who Ride Motorcycles by Will Forte
Persistence Is for Suckers by David Wain
The Heart Is a Choking Hazard by Stephen Colbert
Don’t Come on Your Cat by Neal Pollack
Technology Can Be Friend and Foe
Eggs Must Be Broken . . . by Tom Shillue
Women Are Never Too Young to Mess with Your Head by Larry Wilmore
Keep Some Secret Admirers Secret by Eric Slovin
A Grudge Can Be Art by Andy Selsberg
I Still Like Jessica by Rodney Rothman
Don’t Leave Too Much Room for the Holy Spirit by Tom McCarthy
I Am a Gay Man by Dan Savage
Nine Years Is the Exact Right Amount of Time to Be in a Bad Relationship by Bob Odenkirk
A Dog Is No Reason to Stay Together by Damian Kulash, Jr.
You Too Will Get Crushed by Ben Karlin
You Can Encapsulate Feelings of Regret, Panic, and Desperation in a Two-and-a-Half-Minute Pop Song by Adam Schlesinger, Professional Songwriter
I’m Easy by Paul Simms
Things More Majestic and Terrible Than You Could Ever Imagine by Todd Hanson
Always Make Her Feel Like She’s #1
Dirty Girls Make Bad Friends by A. J. Jacobs
Being Awkward Can Be a Prophylactic Against Dry Humping by Matt Goodman
Dating a Stripper Is a Recipe for Perspective by Patton Oswalt
Sometimes You Find a Lost Love, Sometimes You Don’t by Bob Kerrey
Don’t Enter a Karaoke Contest Near Smith College; You Will Lose to Lesbians by Jason Nash
Get Dumped Before It Matters by David Rees
It Wasn’t Me, It Was Her by Rick Marin
She Wasn’t the One by Bruce Jay Friedman
Notes Towards a Unified Theory of Dumping by Sam Lipsyte
Contributors
Acknowledgments